Sight&Sound - 05.2020

REVIEWS

76 | Sight&Sound | May 2020

Reviewed by Kate Stables

In the Britain of 1970 the Miss World contest

represented the height of saucy sophistication.

Philippa Lowthorpe’s perky but earnest comedy

drama does a fine job of recreating the drab,

sexist national climate; but its heroines are the

Women’s Liberation activists who brought

the 1970 contest to a standstill. The film

splices together the true stories of the political

awakening of mature student Sally Alexander

and the fierce ambitions of two black contestants,

with MC Bob Hope’s skirt-chasing shtick.

Often unsure whether to go for outrage

or laughs, it maintains a genial but uneasy

balance between its dramatic and comic

elements. Keira Knightley’s serious-minded

Sally, endlessly patronised by male tutors and

students (at interview, she is awarded a covert

9/10 mark for looks), simmers with frustration

at their refusal to take seriously her feminist

history proposal. But her zealous strand is

overshadowed by the sly wideboy comedy of

Rhys Ifans’s Eric Morley, the short-tempered

pageant pasha, pestered by activist Peter Hain

until he includes in the line-up, alongside the

white Miss South Africa, a black Miss Africa

South (a vulnerable Loreece Harrison). Rebecca

Frayn’s script is sharply observant of the racism

that she and Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s gracious Miss

Grenada face, ignored by the press but eager to

use the contest as a springboard to a better life.

While the film transmits sensitively these

women’s longing, its agitprop squat scenes

can’t convey the excitement of early Women’s

Liberation Movement meetings, wasting Jessie

Buckley’s bolshie Jo as a noisy foil to the sensible

Sally. The film invites comparison to other period

protest dramas, such as Pride (2014) or Made

in Dagenham (2010) but, lacking the political

anger of the one and the collective-action

comedy of the other, it feels well-intentioned

but small-scale, a gently satirical snapshot of

changing times. Conventionally shot and scored

(Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ gets an outing),

its interiors dipped in Seventies brown-and-

orange, it has the feel of a classy TV movie.

With the exception of Mbatha-Raw’s steel

under sweetness, the performances are fine, but

slightly mechanical. So is the film’s unifying

feminist theme, least successfully manifested in

the revolt of Dolores Hope (a jaundiced Lesley

Manville) against Bob’s casual infidelities.

Greg Kinnear plays Bob with the smirking

entitlement of a man who can sum up his

consideration for women’s feelings in a winking

“I consider feeling women all the time.”

Misbehaviour

United Kingdom 2019

Director: Philippa Lowthorpe

Certificate 12A 106m 12s

London, 1970. Student Sally is inspired by the first

Women’s Liberation conference in the UK. After

meeting raucous Jo, she joins a Women’s Lib group.

Bob Hope is hired to MC the Miss World contest;

Dolores Hope is sick of his infidelities. Jennifer (Miss

Grenada) and Pearl (Miss Africa South) bond during

rehearsals. These black contestants are ignored

by the press. The WL group agree to disrupt the

contest. Sally is scared after an Angry Brigade bomb

is detonated earlier in the theatre, but she shows

up, and the WL group disrupt the show, stopping TV

transmission. Sally and Jo are arrested on stage;

pregnant Jo is manhandled. Jennifer wins Miss World,

and Pearl comes second. In the ladies’ loo, Sally and

Jennifer have a pointed exchange – Jennifer’s win

will inspire young black girls. Dolores, inspired by

the disruption, goes out alone. The real-life stories

of the women run alongside the final credits.

Produced by

Suzanne Mackie

Sarah Jane Wheale

Screenplay

Rebecca Frayn

Gaby Chiappe

Story Written by

Rebecca Frayn

Director of

Photography

Zac Nicholson

Editor

Úna ní Dhonghaíle

Production Designer

Cristina Casali

Music

Dickon Hinchcliffe

Production

Sound Mixer

Martin Beresford

Costume Designer

Charlotte Walter

©Pathé Productions,

British Broadcasting

Corporation and the

British Film Institute

Production

Companies

Pathé, BBC Films,

Ingenious Media

and BFI present a

Left Bank Pictures

production

Executive Producers

Andy Harries

Rebecca Frayn

Cameron McCracken

Jenny Borgars

Rose Garnett

Andrea Scarso

Natascha Wharton

Cast

Keira Knightley

Sally Alexander

Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Jennifer Hosten,

Miss Grenada

Jessie Buckley

Jo Robinson

Keeley Hawes

Julia Morley

Phyllis Logan

Evelyn Alexander

Lesley Manville

Dolores Hope

Rhys Ifans

Eric Morley

Greg Kinnear

Bob Hope

Luke Thompson

Peter Hain

Emma Corrin

Jillian Jessup, Miss

South Africa

Loreece Harrison

Pearl Janssen, Miss

Africa South

Dolby Digital

In Colour

[2.35:1]

Distributor

The Walt Disney

Studios

That 70s show: Keira Knightley, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Credits and Synopsis

Reviewed by Alex Davidson

Moffie, based on André Carl van

der Merwe’s autobiographical

novel, is the latest feature

by the black South African

filmmaker Oliver Hermanus

to revisit his homeland’s Apartheid past.

The film plunges the viewer into the toxic

world of compulsory military service during

Apartheid, an unholy chamber-pot of aggression,

machismo, homophobic bullying and overt

racism. The film is set in 1981, when young

men were drafted to stamp out communism

and fight ‘die swart gevaar’ (‘the black danger’)

at the Angolan border. In a potent early scene,

the camera refuses to flinch when a black man

is abused by one of the white recruits, to the

delight of his baying fellow soldiers, with an

intense close-up on the victim’s anguished

face, daring the viewer to look away. But as the

film continues, it is entrenched homophobia,

rather than racism, that becomes the focus.

The structure of the first segment of Moffie

inevitably recalls Full Metal Jacket (1987), with

Hilton Pelser’s terrifying performance as the

sadistic Sergeant Brand breathing the same air as

R. Lee Ermey’s drill instructor in the Kubrick. The

cynical appropriation of patriotism and religion

to justify Apartheid render the boot-camp scenes

even more repellent. It’s a grim environment for

any man, but for a gay man it can be lethal, as

teenager Nick (Kai Luke Brummer) soon learns

when he is conscripted; the homophobic slur

that gives the film its title is translated as “faggot”

in the English subtitles, and is uttered regularly

throughout. In this world, gay men are enemies

of the state, the antithesis of the strong white

South African male, and must be suppressed

or destroyed. When Nick shares a romantic

connection with fellow recruit Dylan (Ryan de

Villiers), both men find themselves in danger.

In a brilliantly shot flashback, we see a

powerful representation of gay shame, as a

lengthy single take shows us a memory from

Nick’s adolescence, when a trip to the swimming

pool leads to Nick being very publicly accused

of masturbating while looking at a man in

the shower. The key ingredients necessary for

homophobia to flourish – an aggressive bully (in

this case, an adult) who goes unconfronted, a loud

and public humiliation to drown out possible

support, supposed allies (Nick’s parents) who fail

to defend the victim – cluster to form a moment

of hell that will chime with anyone who has been

an oppressed queer kid. A challenge for films

about bullied LGBTQ+ characters is the possbility

that the victims’ often reserved nature will make

them seem colourless and hard to relate to for the

viewer, a problem reflected in reviews of Anne

Fontaine’s underrated Reinventing Marvin (2017).

Though Brummer is well cast as Nick, the mask

his character has to wear means his character

can only express a limited range of emotions.

Moffie leaves the viewer in no doubt about

why such men behave so cautiously – to show

personal feelings might reveal their queerness

and lead to bullying, ostracism and violence.

Moffie is the latest film to show how gay men try

to survive when archaic ideas about masculinity

dominate. Christiaan Olwagen’s Kanarie (2018), a

Moffie

Director: Oliver Hermanus

Certificate 18 104m 24s

Available

on VOD

platforms

in the UK